Making own mix and using a specific cartridge to print

I’m making my own mix of 3 types of FL resins and getting great results when I print them in a specific cartridge/mode.
Since this type of cartridge/material is only 10% of the total mix I’m now running into the problem that the printer tells me the cartridge is worn out.
This is not the case since I’m using the bite valves form the other cartridges I’m mixing with.
Any way of working around this. And not trowing away 60-70% of the resin of the cartridge I’m using to print.

Btw. The material is in result a plastic that’s much stiffer then though or durable and less breakable then the clear. I’m using it to produce functional prints and the results up till now are great. Still need to do some more testing. Maybe FL is willing to help out to get a new material to life! And the material doesn’t stick to the tray and damage it in the process as is the case with most durable prints.

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When mixing different materials together, it’s often safest to run the printer in Open Mode. The tank level sensor is capacitive and different resins can yield different values. This can lead to the tank over-filling and potentially result in a spill.

The bite valves on cartridges also do wear out over time and this is why we caution against re-filling cartridges. They will comfortably dispense one liter of resin but do eventually wear and can lead to failure.

Have you tried to new versions of Tough (V3 or V4)? It sounds like those are the material properties you’re approximating with the greater stiffness than Durable and higher impact strength than the Standard Resins.

If you only have 10% of that material in the mix that’s never going to work. You need to use a cartridge that’s at least 50% of the mix to even get close. And yes, there can be fill/overflow issues like Frew suggests.

The software counts and stores bite valve actuations. Anything you can do to reduce the number of times the bite valve is used will help. You can manually top off the tank after each print for instance. You can also pour the first tank full of resin (about 200mL) from the cartridge and eliminate the initial fill cycle from the counts. There are also other ways to keep things rolling without filling from the bite valve (pause, fill, and resume).

If the heater and wiper worked in open mode this wouldn’t be an issue.

While you can continue to use a cartridge after it’s dispensed 1L of resin eventually it will not allow you to use that cartridge anymore due to the expectation that the valve will be worn out.

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